Date of Award

Document Type

Degree Name

Department

First Advisor

Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

Abstract

This qualitative study of culturally responsive educational leadership (CREL) explores noteworthy cases of system-wide innovation spanning decades through interviews with seven education professionals active within Indigenous movements and organizations driving Native Hawaiian education and the revitalization of Hawaiian language and culture. The research focus includes the Na Honua Mauli Ola Guidelines (and Pathways) for Culturally Healthy and Responsive Learning Environments, along with the preceding Kumu Honua Mauli Ola Philosophy Statement. Interviewees, all with direct connections to these innovations, illuminate their local and global significance through personal accounts of their development and implementation. The study’s uniquely situated methodology yields rich data for systems-level analysis of these innovative cases of CREL and related work addressing persistent inequities for historically underserved students in the singularly unique environment, education system and socio-cultural context of Hawai‘i. A transformative leadership centered theoretical framework guides data analyses striving for a more complete process-oriented understanding, organizationally and operationally, of effective system-wide CREL practice (across all levels of the P-20 continuum and among various organizational types) in an uncommonly diverse community, as demonstrated in these cases of Indigenous innovation exemplifying CREL in Hawai‘i.